JSngry

A few misfires, but on the whole, a very strong album, funky and soulful and slickly produced, all in one. If you're an RC fan and don't know this one, you might want to fix that.

Joe Simon tends to be on the awesome side of things in general. At least for me.

Ok, I'm coming around on the Joe Williams BN side, at least a little bit. It's kind of a schizo side. The parts where they're making a jazzy/MOR/R&B record for AM jazz radio end up working well enough on an individual basis. Time/place/intent/etc. That's ok. But the parts where they try to make a Jerry Vale record with Joe Williams as Jerry Vale...that's where it gets uncomfortable.

Judge Judy Chief Justice Big Chief

Nope - it's Joe Williams - Worth Waiting For

Nothing earth-shattering (to put it mildly), by I know we have some Joe Henderson completionists here for whom this of interest might be, perhaps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9zAqrm9SgU

Jerry Van Dyke indeed.

Sets, and choreography:

Kudos to Justin Grimm, who made his MLB debut tonight after being called up from AA Frisco. 6 IP, 6 hits, 3 runs, 7K (inc. 5 consecutive) and most impressively, no walks. Hardly eye-popping #s )especially against the Astros), but the kid got the call and didn't fuck it up, showed plenty of poise and didn't look like he's never played AA ball. Plus, he got the win, thanks to a Ranger rally in the bottom of the 6th. Good to see those Ranger rallies again, and good to see them again winning games against teams they should beat instead of letting Weird Baseball continue to have its way. I hate Weird Baseball, it's like those films from the early NASA days when rockets fail during launch, just...disturbing. Physics Gone Wrong usually is. Alos good to see the return of Prime Yu Darvish last night, after some rest and some work with Mike Maddux. I'm still gald to have Darvis, expect there to be some bumps on the learning curve, and for some of those bumps to be painful. But the guy's got the stuff, and most importantly, he's got that fire. He's going to learn, and he's going to succeed, and for the next few years, he will do so as a Texas Ranger. I'm ok with that. Meanwhile, Ervin Santana's got a perfect game thorough 6 in Anaheim. But here, it's good to know that even if he goes ahead and gets one, or even a win, oh well!

Love it when that happens.

I still say Earl Hines grew a third hand. Nothing else makes sense.

Peter Peter. Pumpkin Eater Jack O'Lantern George Washington Carver

Hines didn't improve his playing, he just grew another hand.

His first album was a trio side on Mercury, probably from when he was Sarah Vaughan's MD. Very mainstream stuff. I give him credit for being curious and checking stuff out. There's plenty who aren't and who don't. And I think that quality shows up in his later, overtly "commercial" work as well. It's a guy making calculated choices, sure, but he's making informed choices, not just giving his artistic booty up to the Robot Probe while reading the Enquirer in the checkout line. Those type guys are a pox on humanity. The Bob James types are just people having fun making a good living. I'll not convict for that.

Beyond category.

As long as you get it right, it doesn't matter.

So...this thread is cool!

It's avant-garde-y-ish...lots of no doubt well-intentioned and sincere effects that in the end are still effects.

One of those albums where you ask yourself any number of variations on the "Why?" question and you already know the answers, but...you just gotta ask anyway, just to maintain good work habits. A few ok cuts (and a few more hideous/surreal ones), but they could have made this same "type" record and made it a lot better. And it just don't sound good. Produced by George Butler, arranged by Horace Ott but my copy is the classic blue-white label, so pre-"Blue Note Hits A New Note" focused inessentiality...'nuff said. Edit to add - there's some interesting (enough) material and concepts here, but they don't happen in sync w/each other.

Yeah, this is yet another good one from Henry. Tight as the proverbial gnat's ass, and quite often funkier than the equally proverbial mosquito's tweeter. The band is really inside the music, obviously, and vice-versa. Of course, this is true of damn near every Henry Threadgill album ever made, but each one adds a little something to the ongoing story. This one adds a lot, I think, just because of the way the unusual denisties of the instrumentation and the eternal demands of the music come together like it would be this way anyways, all by itself. The previous Zooid albums were delightful and masterful, this one is all that plus. Such a band! Such a leader! The great ones do indeed make it look easy.